Windows 10: Making a Smaller Bootable Media Partition

When making a bootable media through the Windows 11 Media Creation Tool, it tells you that the minimum device filesize needed to create the bootable media must be at least 8 GB. If you try installing to a single volume thumbdrive with the partition occupying the whole drive, it will automatically take exactly 32 GB, delete the rest of the partition, and unpartition the rest of the drive. However, if you try defining two partitions on the thumbdrive, then target the partition of your choice of size I tried 8, 9, 12, 16, and 32 [with the correct FAT32 filestructure] GB, the Tool will happily d

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Making another HDD partition bootable

The issue is as following:

I have a first HDD with its first partition set as bootable, having boot manager that includes options to load WinXP (this HDD) and Win7 (on another HDD).
I will be replacing the first drive with a new one - so what's the trick to make Win7 HDD bootable and boot Win7 without the need to reinstall anything (way too much hassle)?

 

Can I separate and move the boot partition from an old HDD to a smaller HDD or SSD?

Yes, there is a way to move just the boot processes to a smaller drive. This process is called "moving the system partition."

Here are the steps to move the system partition to a smaller drive:

First, make sure you have a backup of all your important files and data. Moving the system partition can be risky, so it's important to have a backup in case anything goes wrong.

Create a bootable USB drive with Windows installation media.

Insert the USB drive into your computer and restart your computer.

Boot from the USB drive and select "Repair your computer."

Go to "Troubleshoot" > "Advanced Options" > "Command Prompt."

In the Command Prompt, type "diskpart" and press Enter.

Type "list disk" to see a list of all the disks on your computer.

Identify the smaller drive you want to use as the new boot partition and make a note of its disk number.

Type "select disk X" (where X is the disk number of the smaller drive) and press Enter.

Type "clean" and press Enter. This will erase all the data on the smaller drive, so make sure you have a backup.

Type "create partition primary size=Y" (where Y is the size you want to allocate for the new boot partition) and press Enter.

Type "format fs=ntfs quick" and press Enter to format the new partition.

Type "assign letter=C" (or any letter you prefer) and press Enter to assign a drive letter to the new partition.

Type "exit" to exit the DiskPart utility.

In the Command Prompt, type "bcdboot C:\Windows /s C:" (where C: is the letter you assigned to the new partition) and press Enter. This will copy the boot files to the new partition.

Restart your computer and go to the BIOS settings.

Change the boot order so that the new partition is first in the boot sequence.

Save and exit the BIOS settings.

Your computer should now boot from the new partition.

Note that after moving the system partition, all your data will still be on the old partition. You can either continue using the old partition for your data or move your data to the new partition.

 

Make second drive bootable

Thanks guys. The first drive is actually now in another computer. I was trying to cheat to make the drive that was the second drive bootable. I downloaded Partition Wizard Bootable CD and was able to make it the primary drive, but that still didn't work since it had installed BOOTMGR on the first drive. Secondly, I'm short one DVD drive ATM. I'll have a new DVD drive here on Friday and then I will try newtekie's suggestion, mostly out of curiosity. It has 32 bit on it now and I'm going to give 64 bit a try. Anyone have the RC1 64 bit ISO?